School of Life

Skilty Labastilla

A Is for Agustin, the debut feature of Grace Simbulan, follows Agustin Amado, an Aeta man in his early 40s whose hollow cheeks and sun-drenched, wrinkled skin provide quite a contrast to his child-like grin and gentle disposition. He and his wife make charcoal for a living: the middleman pays them P150 for each sack and sells the same sack for P250. This exploitation of the poor and uneducated is a fairly common scenario anywhere in the world, and it’s one of the reasons why Agustin decided to enroll himself in a public elementary school in his remote Zambales barrio. 

Simbulan, like several other female Filipino documentarists of note (e.g., Ditsi Carolino, Ramona Diaz, Babyruth Villarama, among others) who act as fly-on-the-wall observers and eschew talking heads, patiently follows Agustin as he navigates the world of schoolchildren even as his own son is enrolled in the same school. The chaotic classroom scenes are juxtaposed with Agustin’s serene way of going about his livelihood, mundane conversations with his as-meek wife, and scenes of the couple going caroling for loose change in the town center.

Agustin talks in front of his classmates in a scene from A Is for Agustin

Film historian Nick Deocampo recently mentioned that good documentaries are 80% finding the right subject and the rest everything else (mainly camera placement and editing), and it seems to be the case in this documentary, as the subject matter alone is interesting enough for one to keep wanting to know what will happen to Agustin. What’s not shown in the film is Agustin actually graduating from grade school a year or so after his son does, and in my interview with Simbulan, she noted that she did not want to end the film on a Cinderella note where all’s well that ends well. The film instead ends with the son’s graduation and leaves the future for Agustin hanging. Asked about Deocampo’s equation, Simbulan adds that the filmmaker’s sensitivity is a crucial ingredient — knowing when to pick up the camera to record what’s happening and when to know to respect the film subjects by keeping the camera shut.

The film is effective in showing the absurdity of a society where those who fall through the cracks of formal education are left to fend for themselves. While Agustin’s decision to go to school to escape exploitation is laudable, this individualism mindset puts the onus of bettering one’s life on the shoulders of poor people like Agustin rather than on the state. We see countless heartwarming stories in TV documentaries — such as Kapuso Mo Jessica Soho and the like — of the marginalized lifting themselves up from squalor through sheer hard work and luck, and we forget that structures still exist to put these people and millions of others in squalor in the first place.

An example of this education-as-a-personal-responsibility ethos is shown in several classroom scenes where Agustin is clearly having a difficult time solving math problems yet there is no effort from the teacher to help him understand or to correct his mistakes. In many public schools, assessments are rarely meant to be formative and feedback for improvement is seldom given. There’s no surprise that the Philippines ranks lowest in reading comprehension in a recent international survey. Yet teachers are not to be blamed for this as they are often overworked, underpaid, and deal with overcrowded classrooms. The problem as we all know is systemic. 

Today’s formal education exists in large part to cater to the needs of the capitalist world, that is why indigenous learning and knowledge, which value egalitarianism (not hierarchy and inequality), protection of nature (not exploitation), and community (not individualism) are rejected. Agustin, at the tailend of the film when he decides to temporarily stop schooling to give way to his son, rues that his brain is waning like sunset, while that of his son is still rising. He says this at 40 years old, an age where modern-day humans should be at their prime. 

One of the film’s limitations, brought about by its strict adherence to the immersive fly-on-the-wall approach, is the narrative becoming too dependent on the actions of the film’s subject rather than on elucidating on some of the issues that it uncovers along the way. An example is the throwaway mention of the government’s Alternative Learning System (ALS), which aims to address the needs of those who fall out of formal education. A teacher tells Agustin that he should have been enrolled in ALS, which allows for more flexibility in terms of schedule and learning pace, instead of being in a traditional classroom with young children. Agustin’s reply seemingly points to the inconvenience of going to a farther school to avail of ALS services, and in a latter voiceover, he mentions that ALS requires a grade school diploma, which is actually not the case. Had the filmmaker pursued this inquiry further by interviewing ALS staff, or suggesting to Agustin that he could maybe visit the ALS office, viewers could have a more nuanced understanding of the issue of alternative education and the attending issues surrounding its implementation.

By focusing solely on the perspective of Agustin, the film becomes more of a human interest story than a topical one, which is not necessarily a bad thing. In my view, though, documentary filmmaking in the Third World can push some more into active/activist filmmaking, where storytellers and story-bearers can work hand-in-hand to push for change. Can A Is for Agustin make Agustin’s life better? Does the strength of the film lie mainly on the viewer’s capacity to empathize and to rail against the world’s injustices? How can documentary cinéastes’ rage be scaled up to reach decision-makers? Is shining a light on the stories of the marginalized enough to overhaul the oppressive capitalist system? Is it unfair to put this responsibility on documentary films only and not on fictional films?

I have been thinking about these questions and wrote a bit about my thoughts in my commentaries on Sa Palad ng Dantaong Kulang and Yield, my favorite local films of 2018. But I also bring this up in my interview with Grace Simbulan, who is currently US-based pursuing graduate studies, where we discuss her filmography and details about her eight-year journey with A Is for Agustin, among others.

Skilty Labastilla interviews Grace Simbulan, director of A Is for Agustin